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An awful lot of America’s top military brass have been taking hits lately. Is it just a coincidence that several four-star generals and a two-star admiral get the axe or resign in disgrace within the space of less than a month? Do any of these have anything to do with the administration’s Benghazigate scandal? Or are they, as some military observers suspect, only the first installment of the Obama agenda to decimate the military services?

General David Petraeus, of course, has been at the center of a media storm since his resignation as CIA director on November 9, amid revelations of an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer.

Here is a timeline of recent casualties in the highest echelons of the U.S. military services:

• Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette — On October 28, the commander of the John C. Stennis carrier strike group in the Middle East, was abruptly removed from command and returned to the U.S.

• General David Petraeus — On November 9, General Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, resigned as head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

• General John Allen — On November 13, news stories reported that Gen. Allen, who was Gen. Petraeus’s successor in Afghanistan and a top nominee for NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was embroiled in a potential scandal involving emails with Jill Kelley, a socialite at McDill Air Force base. Allen has insisted that there was no improper relationship between himself and Mrs. Kelley, but his career path to the top NATO post has been scotched, and the ongoing investigation could potentially lead to his resignation.

• General William “Kip” Ward — On November 13, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demoted Gen. Ward, the former head of U.S. AFRICOM, stripping him of his fourth star, following a lengthy DOD Inspector General probe that found Ward guilty of lavish spending and extravagant travel.

The removal of General Ham and the resignation of General Petraeus have particularly stirred widespread concern that both cases may be driven by White House efforts to smother exposure of the administration’s handling of the deadly September 11, 2012 “consulate” debacle in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed (see here and here).

The timing of the resignations, removals, revelations and demotions were bound to spark suspicions of a Benghazi connection, particularly in the case of Gen. Petraeus, who was scheduled to testify this week in congressional inquiries into the deadly Libyan attacks. His resignation put his appearance before the committees in doubt. However, members of Congress have let it be known they expect him to testify.

In a November 12 interview with NBC News, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Obama administration is behaving in an “unacceptable” manner and she is ready to subpoena information it is denying her committee.

“I believe that Director Petraeus made a trip to [Libya] shortly before this became public,” Feinstein said. “I believe that there is a trip report. We have asked to see the trip report. One person tells me has read it. And then we try to get it, and they tell me it hasn’t been done. That’s unacceptable. We are entitled to this trip report, and if we have to go to the floor of the Senate on a subpoena, we will do just that.”

Director Petraeus went to Capitol Hill on September 14 for a closed-door, classified briefing of legislators. During that briefing, it has been reported, he upheld the now-debunked false story that the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi had resulted in response to popular outrage over an anti-muslim Internet video.

However, it has also been reported that Petraeus privately stated to one member of Congress, “Do you want the official line or do you want the real truth?”

Today Senator Feinstein announced that Petraeus will be “talking to the committee,” but was unclear as to whether that meant he would be testifying publicly and under oath or just briefing committee members in closed session. “He is very willing and interested in talking to the committee,” Feinstein told reporters today. “It’s just on Benghazi. Our hearings are on Benghazi and the intelligence that preceded Benghazi and the intelligence that determined the security.”

Another big question that has not yet been answered is whether Gen. Carter Ham will be testifying. In defending the administration’s decision not to send aid to the besieged “consulate,” Secretary Panetta claimed that Ham had “very strongly” backed Panetta’s assessment that since the situation on the ground in Benghazi was so uncertain, no attempt should be made to send military assistance to the American personnel who were under attack. However, according to unconfirmed reports, Ham, instead of backing the Obama/Panetta order to “stand down” and let Americans die, had decided to go ahead and launch a rescue effort. Reportedly, he was immediately arrested by his second in command and prevented from initiating the rescue.

If this account is true, then obviously that would be a huge story, with enormous ramifications. Gen. Ham should definitely be called to testify publicly and placed under oath to determine precisely what did transpire the night of September 11-12.

Spiking Benghazi: The Media Fix

There is little doubt that Team Obama was fully aware that the Benghazi disaster could blow up in their faces just as the neck-and-neck presidential was headed into the closing stretch. A CBS News national telephone poll of likely voters conducted October 25-28 did not portend well for Obama. Locked in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, and with the economy in shambles and sliding toward a fiscal cliff, the Obama White House could ill afford a late-inning foreign policy disaster, especially when Obama propagandists were touting foreign policy and national security as their candidate’s great strength.

According to the CBS poll, only 38 percent of voters approved of President Obama’s handling of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. Over half of all voters (51 percent) disapproved. And an even higher 57 percent of the crucial independent voters disapproved of his handling of Benghazi. And those negatives had developed with all of the major media faithfully retailing the White House talking points on Benghazi and steadfastly censoring any reports that challenged the crumbling administration narrative. Genuine journalistic digging and real news reporting would have been a game changer in the tight presidential race.

For the sixth night in a row, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News refused to give one single second of coverage to a Fox News report that the Obama Administration denied help to those attacked and killed by terrorists at the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11. According to a Media Research Center analysis, ABC, CBS, and NBC have failed to cover this devastating story — not to confirm it, not to knock it down, and never mind do their own investigation. The story broke last Friday, long before Hurricane Sandy swamped the news cycle.

Further, neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times has committed a single inch of their newspapers to a news story about this report.

According to Fox News, “sources claim officers at the nearby CIA annex in Benghazi were twice told to stand down when they requested to help those at the consulate. They later ignored those orders. Fox News was also told that a subsequent request for back-up when the annex came under attack was denied as well.”

“The liberal ‘news’ media’s refusal to cover this story exposes how corrupt they have become,” declared Media Research Center President Brent Bozell. “Four Americans died in Libya in a coordinated terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. The Obama Administration has been caught in a maze of falsehoods. This reeks of a cover-up. This scandal could and would derail the Obama re-election efforts. ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, and the New York Times are so vested in the re-election of Barack Obama that they are deliberately spiking this huge story. It’s sickening.”

Mr. Bozell continued:

The Obama administration’s cover-up of their deceitful response to the Benghazi terrorist attack is without a doubt the biggest political news story of 2012. The American people have a right to know what really happened before they cast their ballots on Election Day.

If ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, and the New York Times refuse to ask the tough questions, then they no longer serve any purpose. And if they’re sitting on evidence to help Obama win re-election, they’re as guilty in this cover-up as is the administration.

As the Media Research Center pointed out in a previous analysis, while the major media were spiking the Benghazi story, they were lavishing friendly coverage on President Obama and swamping viewers with celebrity gossip and buzz on the latest consumer gizmos and Hollywood releases.
And, of course, one of the most blatant examples of the media covering for Obama was the spectacle put on by CNN’s Candy Crowley in the second Presidential debate, where she shamelessly dropped her supposedly neutral role as moderator to take over and respond to Mitt Romney’s challenges to Obama regarding Benghazi.

Decimating the Military: Obama’s “Night of the Long Knives”?

While the cashiering of CIA Director General Petraeus and AFRICOM commander General Ham certainly suggest a connection to the administration’s ongoing heavy-handed effort to keep the Benghazi disaster from developing into a post-election crisis for the White House, the other aforementioned military resignations and demotions may be signaling something even bigger.

A number of political and military analysts interviewed by The New American believe the Obama administration is in the process of “purging” the U.S. Armed Services, and that we will see a much larger number of line officers removed for various scandals, especially those deemed “politically incorrect,” or those who may be occupying a post that the Obama administration wants to open up for a more “progressive” candidate.

Some are predicting that the bloodletting in the ranks thus far is but the opening salvo in Obama’s “Night of the Long Knives,” a reference to Adolph Hitler’s murderous purge of Ernst Rohm and other Nazis, as well as non-Nazi political opponents whom he saw as obstacles to his consolidation of dictatorial power.

New Zealand researcher Trevor Loudon, author of Barack Obama and the Enemies Within, and editor of the highly acclaimed New Zeal blog at TrevorLoudon.com, told this writer during an interview two weeks before the election:

It’s very clear that President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many of those around them absolutely “loathe the military,” as Hillary once put it. [Defense Secretary] Panetta, while he was a congressman, was very heavily involved with the Institute for Policy Studies, a very radical Marxist think tank, which supported the Soviet objective of subverting and eviscerating the U.S. military services. Panetta, together with David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, and others in the administration, really do see the U.S. military, as it currently is, as the enemy.

Former Navy SEAL Steve Elson echoes that assessment. “President Obama and the people running his administration really do hate the military,” Elson told The New American. “It’s not just that they ‘don’t understand the military culture,’ [as some critics claim]; they really just don’t like us. In fact they hate us.” Elson continued:

They’re fine with using us, sending us all over the world whenever it works to score political points for them. They don’t mind getting us killed, sending us out with treasonous ROEs [rules of engagement], as in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers and marines were ordered stand guard, go into hostile zones without loaded weapons. Or, as in Benghazi, they cowardly sit in the Pentagon and the White House watching and doing nothing while brave men die.

Too many of the top brass are playing the political correctness game when they should be refusing to carry out these immoral and traitorous orders. In the end, it didn’t help Petraeus either. He played their games and went along with their political correctness, and look where it got him. Fine, he deserved it, as far as I’m concerned. But the guys that are out there with their lives on the line don’t [deserve it]. As you can see, I’m anything but politically correct, but I’m only saying out loud what most active duty soldiers will tell you privately. Obama and those running his administration will destroy the U.S. military, if the American people let him, if they don’t wake up to what he is doing.

From the evidence thus far, it appears that the decisions to deny military help to the US Consulate in Benghazi and subsequently to the CIA safe house was made by President Obama.

The Obama Administration tired to shift the blame to the CIA for the lack of military support for the US Consulate and the CIA safe house. A CIA spokeswoman denied that requests for help had been turned down by the CIA, implying the decision was made by President Obama,

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, though, denied the claims that requests for support were turned down.

“We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi,” she said. “Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night-and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades.”

General David Petraeus, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has made no comments on what happened in Benghazi. Petraeus has not appeared on any news broadcasts and has given no interview. Petraeus will not lie for Obama. Breitbart has reported that Petraeus has denied that the CIA was the agency denying help to those requesting it in Benghazi.

Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus has emphatically denied that he or anyone else at the CIA refused assistance to the former Navy SEALs who requested it three times as terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on the night of Sep. 11. The Weekly Standard and ABC News report that Petraeus’s denial effectively implicates President Barack Obama, since a refusal to assist “would have been a presidential decision.”

Earlier today, Denver local reporter Kyle Clarke of KUSA-TV did what the national media largely refuses to do, asking Obama directly whether the Americans in Benghazi were denied requests for aid. Obama dodged the question, but implied that he had known about the attacks as they were “happening.”

Emails released earlier this week indicated that the White House had been informed almost immediately that a terror group had taken responsibility for the attack in Benghazi, and Fox News reported this morning that the two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, had been refused in requests for assistance they had made from the CIA annex.

Jake Tapper quoted Petraeus this afternoon denying that the CIA was responsible for the refusal: “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

The Breitbart report continued,

As William Kristol of the Weekly Standard notes, that leaves only President Obama himself to blame:

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

Why would President Barack Obama deny military support to the US Consulate in Benghazi and subsequently deny support to the CIA safe house?

Did Obama want to conceal the fact the attack was conduced by al-Qaeda terrorists? Would this have interfered with Obama’s claim that al-Qaeda is vanishing since the killing of Osama bin Laden?

Was the Terrorist attack in Benghazi organized by Iran or Syria in retaliation for President Obama and Ambassador running guns into Syria and placing the weapons in the hands of Assad? Was Obama afraid of starting a war with Iran or even with Russia?

Did President Obama want Ambassador Stevens killed because Stevens knew too much? Were Stevens and Obama running guns to al-Qaeda in Syria much like Holder and Obama were running guns to drug cartels in Mexico with operation Fast and Furious? Did Obama think allowing al-Qaeda to assassinate Stevens would put the lid on the Syrian gun running operation before it could become a scandal just before the General Election?

Congress and other responsible investigators must ask these difficult questions. If President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and others are innocent, they need to be cleared of suspicion. I suspect the final answers regarding the involvement of President Barack Obama and others in the Obama Administration will shock our nation.

Less than a week after President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and proclaimed, “We broke the Taliban’s momentum,” the chairs of the Senate and House intelligence committees offered a candid assessment of the U.S. mission. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), alongside Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I think we’d both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger.” Their observations are the type of unvarnished truth that our military and civilian leaders typically avoid. U.S. and NATO officials meeting in Chicago later this month should take heed, especially since American taxpayer dollars are helping to fund the insurgents we’re fighting.

Task Force 2010, assembled by General David Petraeus, examined the connections between insurgents and criminal networks on the one hand and Afghan companies and their subcontractors for transportation, construction, and other services on the other. The task force estimated that $360 million in U.S. tax dollars ended up in the hands of insurgents and other “malign actors,” including criminals, warlords, and power-brokers.

The $360 million “represents a fraction of the $31 billion in active U.S. contracts that the task force reviewed,” Associated Press reporters Deb Riechmann and Richard Lardner explained. As Brussels-based International Crisis Group observed in a depressingly frank June 2011 report:

Insecurity and the inflow of billions of dollars in international assistance has failed to significantly strengthen the state’s capacity to provide security or basic services and has instead, by progressively fusing the interests of political gatekeepers and insurgent commanders, provided new opportunities for criminals and insurgents to expand their influence inside the government. The economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen.

Is it any wonder why pouring massive piles of cash into a broken and war-ravaged system resulted in failure? Those who follow the news from Afghanistan will see how rent-seeking inadvertently strengthens that country’s twin evils: corruption and insecurity. As journalist Douglas A. Wissing writes in his eye-opening new book, Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban, in addition to foreign development advisers preoccupied with their own career advancement, development money itself was not countering the insurgency but rather paying for it. Combined with an enemy whose strategy was always about exhaustion, the result has been catastrophic.

Wissing writes, “I learned that the linkage between third-world development and US national security that foreign-aid lobbyists peddled to American policymakers was a faith-based doctrine with almost no foundation in research.” Year after year, the American public was spoon-fed government reports that lacked honesty about why our top-down security and development programs were constantly failing. Buildings were poorly constructed. Projects were bereft of proper oversight. Schools were built without teachers to staff them. Road construction contracts financed insurgent racketeering operations.

The undistorted evidence of a European-based think tank, a bipartisan congressional commission, and a report from military experts, assembled by the war’s former commander, leads to one conclusion: the war is inadvertently throwing American taxpayer dollars at insurgents killing American troops. What about this self-aggrandizing system is making Americans safer? Moreover, what about the safety of the Afghans whom planners in Washington swore to protect from the Taliban? In spite of the tripling of U.S. troops since 2008, a recent report by the U.N. mission concluded that 2011 was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose.

As Feinstein said to CNN on Sunday, “The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces. They’ve gone up north. They’ve gone to the east. Attacks are up.” After over a decade of inadvertently funding the enemy and alienating the local people, Americans should not be surprised with such a dire outcome. If anything, they should be surprised that their elected leaders are finally telling the truth.

Year of the pipeline: Time magazine’s Person of the Year is the protester, and that is probably valid, but we think that the editors missed an important also-ran — the pipeline. Few care to stop and notice the elegance in unsung lengths of steel cylinders stirring fierce passions such as nationalism, greed and tear-inducing anger. We are talking the 24- and 36-inch steel cylinders that carry oil and gas across continents, under bodies of water and over mountains to the 7 billion people of the Earth. Who for instance considered nominating the Keystone Pipeline as political instrument of the year for how it threatened to shut down the whole of the U.S. government, and may yet in the coming couple of months? Then there is Nabucco, a proposed natural gas line that has much of Europe, Russia along with the U.S. tied up in sanctimonious knots over who will exercise geopolitical and economic leverage in Europe. This week Russia notched up the temperature by securing crucial support from Turkey for its repost to Nabucco, a pipeline that it calls South Stream. That battle also will carry over into the new year. And who can forget the proposed trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline, known by the acronym TAPI? A powerful and high-kicking chorus is backing TAPI, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA directorDavid Petraeus, who embraced the line when he was running the ground game as a general in Afghanistan. Observers, including this blog, have cast doubt on TAPI’s feasibility given Afghanistan’s chaos. Yet we celebrate it as a worthy addition to this improbable pantheon — inanimate objects that somehow transmogrify into organic, breathing beings capable of arousing high-stakes emotion in humans.

Political leaders and economists in the euro zone are searching frantically for answers to the same question as a bond market rout of European sovereign debt accelerates, putting the future of the single currency in jeopardy.

Until a few weeks ago, the most likely outcome appeared to be that the 17-nation currency area would muddle through. The euro zone would bail out a few highly indebted small peripheral states, patch up its rickety fiscal governance and avoid either a break-up or a major shift toward federal integration.

Here is an update of the SPX Meridian Market Theory chart that I have been following throughout the year. In my last update – I was opportunistic in the mindset that the charts may have been pointing towards an approaching long-term low. And while we found a low a few weeks later, I now find myself reinterpreting (in light of what I have found in the charts and the data from Europe and Asia) what the most recent rejection may mean towards the market going forward.

You may say I am becoming more concerned as the market has double and tripled dipped the same positive news out of Europe.

Near term, in either case – bull or bear, I find the market precariously placed at the top of the range and likely to fall back swiftly over the balance of the month.

Baker Hughes Incorporated has posted Weekly Rig Count reports to its Investor Relations website according to which the U.S. offshore rig count is up from last week. BHI Rig Count: U.S. -2 to 874 rigs U.S. Rig Count is down 2 rigs from last week to 874, with oil rigs up 5 to 664, gas […]

Exxon Mobil Corporation, an American oil and gas corporation, Friday announced estimated second quarter 2015 earnings of $4.2 billion, compared with $8.8 billion in the same period a year earlier. The U.S. Upstream operations recorded a loss of $47 million, down $1.2 billion from the second quarter of 2014. Non-U.S. Upstream earnings were $2.1 billion, […]

Chevron Corporation, an American multinational energy corporation, Friday reported earnings of $571 million for the second quarter 2015, compared with earnings of $5.7 billion in the same period last year. Included in the quarter were impairments of $1.96 billion and other charges of approximately $670 million relating to project suspensions and adverse tax […]

Afren, an international independent oil exploration and production company, has filed for administration after failing to get support for its refinancing efforts. According to Afren, the recently completed operational review has led the company to expect materially lower near-term production from its assets as compared to the production level assumed in the […]

Awilco Drilling PLC, a UK-based drilling contractor, and Hess Limited have mutually agreed to release the WilHunter semi-submersible rig ahead of the December 1, 2015 contract date as a consequence of the early completion of the decommissioning program. Awilco has said that there will be no negative financial repercussions to either party as a result of this […]

The Offshore Installations (Offshore Safety Directive) (Safety Case etc.) Regulations 2015 (SCR 2015) came into force on July 19, 2015. They are the UK’s response to the EU’s Offshore Directive which was adopted in June 2013. Britain’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published a new guide to help offshore oil and gas operators to adhere […]

British energy company BG Group, soon to be taken over by Shell in a $70 billion deal, has seen its profit rise in the second quarter of 2015. Namely, BG Group reported that its total earnings for the second quarter of 2015 were $2 225 million compared to $1 367 million in the second quarter […]

The World Bank Thursday approved a $700 million investment in guarantees for Ghana’s Sankofa gas project, located in the Cape Three Points block, 60km offshore Ghana. According to the Washington-based international organization World Bank, Sankofa is a transformational project that will help develop new sources of clean and affordable natural gas for domesti […]

U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources approved Thursday the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015, and Offshore Production and National Security Act (OPENS), which would ensure Alaska and other coastal states receive a fair share of the revenue from oil and gas activity off their shores. The bill would also lift the ban on […]

Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (July 27– August 02). DOF Subsea, a subsidiary of DOF ASA, has reached an agreement with Subsea 7... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The Board of Siem Offshore has decided to appoint Idar Hillersøy as new CEO of the company with effect from August 01. Idar Hillersøy has since April 01, 2015 been responsible for the OSV segment of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Siemens Energy Management and VBMS (UK) Ltd have been selected by the proposed Navitus Bay wind park as the preferred electrical transmission system supplier. The two companies will come together to... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Stena Line considers the European Commission’s tacit approval of public financing of the Fehmarn Belt fixed rail-road link between Denmark and Germany discriminatory and not in line with EU State aid... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The Honourable Gail Shea, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment and Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Tidal Lagoon Power (TLP) has appointed JBA Consulting to undertake flood risk assessment work in relation to their Tidal Lagoon Cardiff project. The Severn Estuary is the focus of Tidal Lagoon... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Jee Ltd has announced a number of key internal promotions to strengthen its capabilities and champion the delivery of projects. The new structure, headed up by Jonathan McGregor, Head of engineering... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer will begin two months of dives using unmanned remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to explore marine protected areas in the central Pacific Ocean. Starting on Aug. 1,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

JOIDES Resolution research vessel is preparing to take a group of international scientists on a two-month ocean expedition up the coast of Western Australia to drill deep into the seabed, on a... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

America’s first Bachelor of Science in Maritime Technology, offered by Northwestern Michigan College, is to get a special Falcon ROV, Saab Seaeye informed. In what the college says is a pioneering... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Statoil’s active leases in the Gulf of Mexico

Donald Trump's presidential campaign cut ties with an adviser, Sam Nunberg, on Sunday. The decision came two days after Business Insider revealed Nunberg had a long history of making provocative and racial Facebook posts. Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski dismissed Nunberg as a "low-level" staffer in a phone call discussing his firing. […]

What makes someone uncomfortable depends on the person, but what's universally true is the value of recognizing boundaries and continually pushing them. As Quora user Joos Meyer explains in response to the question, "What uncomfortable things such as cold showers can improve your life?" pushing your comfort zone is the key to self-betterment. […]

Turnberry (United Kingdom) (AFP) - South Korea's Park Inbee claimed her seventh major on Sunday when she carded seven birdies and an eagle in an outstanding record-equalling final round of 65 to win the Women's British Open.A 12 under par 276 total gave the 27-year-old world number one a second major of the season to set alongside her third success […]

At the height of the Cold War, America's underground was rife with dozens of hidden nuclear-missile units. Some of these systems contained Titan II missiles, which carried the largest single nuclear warhead of any missile of its kind before or since. Titan II was a guided ballistic missile that was also the largest, most powerful nuclear weapons system […]

A former Islamic State militant recently spoke with NBC news about his experience fighting with the group in Syria — and why he surrendered after just three days on the frontlines. The man, a 24-year-old single father and college dropout who traveled from New York back to his native Turkey, told NBC what has become a familiar story. Socially isolated and lac […]

“The early bird catches the worm” is a phrase that we’ve all heard since the days of elementary school (I know my mom used to say that as she packed my lunch!). But what if your brain is just programmed to work at night? Whether it’s the midnight moonlight or the hush that falls over the house when everyone’s asleep, working after-hours can equal some seriou […]

Donald Trump has rocketed to the top of another major poll. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released on Sunday showed the real-estate mogul jumping to the front of the pack with 19% of the Republican primary vote. He snatched the top spot away from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who led the last WSJ/NBC poll taken in June. The poll — which was conducte […]

Warfighting gear has dramatically improved over the past 15 years. It goes by many names: Deuce gear, TA-50, or 782 gear. Whatever the nickname, load-bearing equipment is some of the most important kit carried by infantry, special operations, and anyone else whose job is to fight on foot. Since the advent of modular lightweight load-carrying equipment and th […]

Even though retail as we know it may be dying, people are still shopping. But where? Fluent surveyed over 1,600 American consumers as part of its Consumer Pulse research series to learn more about their retail-related decisions. The study uncovered where people love to shop. Some discoveries included how consumers generally preferred Gap's younger, mor […]

Quickly: Who's afraid of getting rich? Come on, let's see those hands. Let's rephrase the question. Are you the kind of person who trips themselves up routinely? Or loves to blame the economy? Or tracks Powerball numbers the way Warren Buffett tracks the stock market? Your fears, ignorance or stuck behavior might stand in the way between you a […]

It was almost exactly two years ago, when during China's long-forgotten attempt to actively deleverage its economy (remember that? good times...) we commented on the country's s first attempt to estimate what its local government debt is since June 2011. This is what we said in July 2013: "China is preparing to admit that the level of problem […]

Excerpted from Third Point LLC's letter to investors, Lately, a varied chorus of powerful union bosses, politicians and candidates, an asset management company executive, and a few ivory tower types have asserted that activism is short term in nature, engaged in by “hit and run” investors who care only about making a quick buck while leaving a company […]

Meet 31-year-old Dan Price. Dan is the CEO of Seattle-based credit card payments processing firm Gravity Payments, and three months ago, he did a funny thing. After talking with a friend who confessed to having difficulties making student loan payments and rent each month on an annual salary of $40,000, Dan decided to set a $70,000 per year pay floor at Gra […]

Submitted by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com, Anyone with a nose for markets will tell you that the Chinese government's attempt to rescue the country's stock markets from collapse is far from succeeding. Bubbles collapse, period; and government interventions don't stop them. Furthermore, we are beginning to see a crack widen in the foundat […]

Submitted by Mac Slavo of SHTFplan.com Are We Being Forced Into a “Second American Civil War”… If So, Who Will Win? A culture war has been stirred up. Divisions are along predictable lines: racism, police abuse, controversial social issues, and plenty of left vs. right, demographics and regional baggage to clash over as well. And by all accounts, differences […]

It was back on January 31 of this year, long before the "game theoretical" approach of Greek negotiations with the Eurogroup and ECB in particular and the Troika, and now Quadriga in general was revealed, that we first forecast with absolute accuracy just what the middle, and end game, of the Greek negotiation with Europe (and vice versa) will be: […]

There are two events this week that will shape the investment climate potentially for the rest of the year. The first is the Bank of England meeting. The following day is the US employment report. Both events take on added significance. The Bank of England enters a new era. The Monetary Policy Committee meets as usual, but shortly after it, the minute […]

George Orwell once wrote in ‘Animal Farm’ ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’. This famous sentence is now valid more than ever before as surprisingly, the IMF will continue to cut Greece out of potential funding, whilst it’s embracing Ukraine by offering that country billions of dollars in hard cash as support. In a surprisi […]

Over the years, we have repeatedly poked fun at the transformation of Venezuela into a "socialist utopia" - an economy in a state of terminal collapse, where the destruction of the currency (one black market Bolivar is now worth 107 times less than the official currency's exchange rate) and the resulting hyperinflation is only matched be barre […]

Part 4: The State Strikes Back The counterfeiting business, like any other, has fundamental economic constraints. At one end, operators must produce a product. That, in turn requires very specialized equipment and supplies, all of which cost money. The better the product is to be, the more it will cost to produce. In the case of the bills sitting in front of […]

It takes more than raw power to run a successful state; people must believe that laying their wealth at your feet is a righteous thing to do. This week, we'll look at a big part of how this idea came to Europe. Continued from last week... THE RE-CONQUEST The Church was not, however, willing to forgo military power. They knew its importance and wished to […]

Today's excerpt is by Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor. The Sandra Bland arrest video he discusses will – or at least should – outrage anyone who respects justice and decency. The way the officer repeatedly screams, "I'm giving you a lawful order" suggests he defines "lawful" as "subservient to me. […]

Modern technology makes life easier, but it can also change our perception in potentially dangerous ways. For instance, the Internet lets us see news and political commentary from many different perspectives. Intuitively, this might seem positive. We can easily examine various viewpoints and make informed decisions. What really happens, though, is that peopl […]

Due to Obamacare, my health plan has become something other than insurance. It is now, for the most part, nothing other than a wealth transfer scheme to benefit the politically connected over others. In order to identify the difference between health insurance and government-mandated health care coverage, we can look to Human Action, in which Ludwig von Mise […]